Undergraduate Innovationat Berkeley

2015 Reinvention Center Conference

Catherine P. KoshlandVice Chancellor for Undergraduate Education, UC Berkeley

Entrepreneurship Ecosystem

• Annual competition that provides funding, support, and encouragement to interdisciplinary teams

of undergraduate and graduate students with “Big Ideas.”

• Encourages students to think creatively, rigorously & independently about how to apply

classroom learning to their own individual passions

• Seeds the energy and innovation that results when students from various disciplines and

departments come together

• Gives students more autonomy earlier in their career – a scaffolding of project management,

entrepreneurship and leadership support

• Serves as a replicable model for tapping the creativity and energy of students to address the

challenges of the 21st century

Initially administered as an award-only program, roughly 65% of submissions came from teams of

graduate students from the business and engineering schools—areas that are generally considered

entrepreneurship centers. In 2009, the program was moved to the Blum Center for Developing

Economies with the following intentions/actions:

– Make the program more accessible to students from all disciplines.

• Emphasize a multidisciplinary team approach

• Broaden category descriptions

• Broaden outreach efforts to attract a diverse set of students

– Make the program more accessible to undergraduate students.

• Increase marketing efforts to raise awareness about the program for lower-level students

– Provide an ecosystem of resources to assist and encourage students as they develop their

ideas.

• Incorporate mentorship, workshop, and networking activities

In the most recent competition, 65% of submissions came from undergraduates in 9 Topical

Areas.

The award aspect of the program is no longer the incentive, but the bonus after 9 months of

concentrated effort which helps to launch the Big Idea into the next phase of development.

Big Ideas: Project Profiles & Categories

• BCAPI (2015) – all undergraduate interdisciplinary team won Information Technology for Society

• Back to the Roots (2011) – undergraduate team won Scaling Up

• Next Drop (2010) – interdisciplinary team of graduate and undergraduate students won Scaling Up

• We Care Solar (2008) – Led by MPH student, interdisciplinary team for Technology for Social Good

BCAPIAn interdisciplinary team with backgrounds in software engineering, cognitive neuroscience, signal processing, machine learning, and business developed an idea to leverage emerging technologies to improve systems for people with disabilities. Their Big Idea uses a brain-computer application program interface (BCAPI) to deliver commands to a motorized wheelchair.

Back to the RootsThese 2011 Big Ideas winners were on their way into corporate careers in investment banking and consulting when they got their Big Idea: to turn coffee grounds—one of America’s largest urban waste streams into mushroom farms.

Today, the company has an expanded product line available in major retail outlets across the country.

NextDropIn almost every city in South Asia, residents have access to mobile phones but not to water. The taps work intermittently and must be monitored for collection. This results in wasted time: missed work, events, and school.

2010 Big Idea winner uses simple technology and mobile phones to alert residents when water is available in their neighborhood. In addition to the impact on residents, the system delivers data on reservoir levels to help utilities to improve distribution decisions.

We Care SolarLaura Satchel, a gynecologist and public health graduate student, won an honorable mention from Big Ideas that catapulted her into nonprofit work that provides portable, solar-powered “suitcases” for use in maternity hospitals, health clinics, and emergency situations. Stachel has been named a CNN Top 10 Hero and a UN Global Citizen, and her organization’s Solar Suitcases have been distributed to more than 30 developing countries.

• In the last year alone, entries were received from 124 teams, consisting

of more than 435 UC Berkeley students from 75 majors.

• $1,536,900 awarded to winning projects—winners have leveraged an

additional $55M through Venture Capital, grants, and other funding

streams

• Big Ideas projects have been placed in 66 countries (including USA)

• A recent survey showed that 27 (out of 28) Big Ideas winners were still

involved in their project in some capacity, one year after the competition

—whether as a student or as a professional.